Twentieth-Century Music and Mathematics ed. by Roberto Illiano (review)

Twentieth-Century Music and Mathematics is a compilation of seventeen essays (and an introduction) in English, French, Italian, and Spanish. The first of its two parts, “Twentieth-Century Composers and Mathematics,” focuses on specific composers—namely Olivier Messiaen, Iannis Xenakis, Franco Evangelisti, Pierre Boulez, Arvo Pärt, Steve Reich, and Philip Glass (but curiously not Milton Babbitt)—and the last chapter in this part covers a handful of contemporary Spanish composers. The second part, “Music and Mathematics: Theories, Practices, Future,” focuses on recent theoretical trends. Although the book has “twentieth century” in its title, its topics are mostly from only the second half of the twentieth century and extend to the beginning of the twenty-first century. It is less of a book on music theory than on the history of music theory, which is by no means a drawback. In the introduction, Massimiliano Locanto explains: